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Education and Literature in Virsinia. 



AN ADDKESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



lilrrari] $mX\m of l^iuitjington Collrge, 



LEXINGTON, YIRGINIA, 



18 JUNE, 1850. 



BY JNO. R. THOMPSON, , . 

OP RICHMOND, / ^^ '^ 



5 RICHMOND: 

H. K. ELLYSON'S POWER PRESS, MAIN STREET. 

1850. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



Washington College, June I8lh, 1850. 

Dear Sir: 

As the representatives of our respective societies, we present to you our 
unfeigned thanks for your very able, classical and eloquent address delivered before us 
this afternoon, and earnestly solicit a copy for publication. 

Yours truly, 
WILLIAM II. 
HENRY 
JOHN 

JOHN L. MOSELEY, 
W. A. CAMl'BELL, 
K. M. TALIAFERRO, 
JOHN R. THOMPSON, Esq. 



lAM II. HOUSTON, ip„„„... ... ™ , 

lY K. I> A I N K, ( Committee of the Wash- 

1! IMBODEX ) iiigtoii ^it«rary Society. 



} Committee of the Graham 
Philanthropic Society. 



Lexington, 20 June, 1850. 

Gentlemen : 

I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your polite letter of the day 
before yesterday, requesting, in the name of your societies, a copy of my address for 
publication. Though I can not flatter myself that the address is worthy of this mark of 
your commendation, I do not feel at liberty to withhold it, if, in your judgment, its pul> 
lication will in any way subserve the interests of your associations. I therefort transmit 
it to you herewith. Be pleased to present to the societies, whose organs you are, my 
grateful sense of their approbation, and believe me, with sentiments of high personal 
regard. Very sincerely yours, 

JNO. E. THOMPSON. 
To Messrs. 'Wn.LiAM H. Houston,"! 

Henrt R. Paine, & >-Com. of TV. L. Society, 

John K. Imboden, J 

AND 

John L. Moselet, f 

W. A. Campbell, & > Com. of G. P. Society. 

K. M. Taliaferro, ) 



ADDEESS, 



Gentlemen of the Literary Societies, 

I am lieie, in obedience to your flattering summons, 
to add my humble contribution to tlie instructive pleasures 
of yom- anniversary. I might well indeed have shrunk 
from ihe task wiiich your pariialiiy has assigned me, in con- 
sidering how lidle of enlerlainment or of judicious counsel 
it would be in my power to impart to young men accustomed 
to the teachings of the learned and able Professors of tiiis 
time-honored institution. But a request, so courteous in its 
character and emanating from a source so highly respecta- 
ble, could not be lightly declined. I will confess, too, that 
I have anticipated a certain degree of intellectual gratifica- 
tion in mingling with you, for the first time, to celebrate the 
festivities of literature upon a spot consecrated to the muses. 
With this anticipation, and that I might become belter 
acquainted with a section of my native Slate justly iej)uted 
as one of the chosen seats of elegant scholarship, I have 
come among you, even though at the hazard of subjecting 
my unpolished periods to the critical perception of minds 
fresh from the investigation of Athenian models. 

But, gentlemen, there is cast upon your anniversary the 
gloom of a painful event* — the sombre wings of the Dread 
Angel oversliadow your collegiate haunts — the very bell 
that has summoned us together has but just tolled the 
departure of a kindred spirit which God, in his inscrutable 
but all-wise Providence, has removed beyond this transient 
sphere. It was my good fortune to have met with your 

* Mr. William 0. Dabney, of Campbell county, a student of the 
college, died on the morning of the 18ih June. 



6 

lamented young friend in odier scenes than this, and I had 
looked forward to the privilege of seeing the light of his 
glad eye, and feeling the pressure of his warm hand, among 
your ranks to-day. AUis! that eye flaslies no more, that 
hand is cold: and I come only to mingle my sorrows with 
your own over his untimely death-bed. Death, terrible in 
all his visitations, seems never so horrid as when he fixes 
the impress of his repulsive signet upon the brow of youth, 
and, in the first burst of our grief, we may perhaps be 
inclined to murmur that one so young, so gifted, so beloved, 
should be the victim of his shaft: 

In the locks his forehead gracing, 

Not a silvery streak, 
Not a line of sorrow's tracing 

On that fair, young cheek; 
Eyes of light and lips of roses, 

Such as Hylas were — 
Over all that curtain closes, 

Which shall rise no more ! 

But, gentlemen, let us submit to the decree of the Most 
High, who orders all things well, however hitler the pang it 
may cost us. Let us take to heart, while we weep above 
the bier of the departed, the lesson we are so impressively 
taught in his early death; let us feel that Time, as lie 
carries us along, is mindful of his scythe as well as of his 
glass, and let us recognize, with melancholy conviction, 
how fleeting and unsubstantial are the phantoms we have 
followed with our love. 

And here, gentlemen, it may be deemed, perhaps, a 
venial departure from established usage, if, before entering 
upon the subject of our present discussion, we turn from the 
consideration of your sad bereavement to indulge, for a time, 
in those delightsome reminiscences which the scene and the 
occasion are so well calculated to call up. The seminary of 
learning with which you are connected is one of rare histori- 



cal interest. The very name, illustrious and venerated, 
which it is proud to bear, is not without a peculiar signifi- 
cance as here employed. If George Washington had never 
achieved the political salvation of a people — if he had never 
confronted and driven back the standards of a powerful and 
insolent foe — if, indeed, he had not "given to the world an 
immortal example of true glory" — his endowment of this 
institution would alone entitle him to our afTectionate and 
grateful remembrance. They who have written of his 
character, tell us that his preeminence consisted in the rare 
union of admirable qualities that he displayed. There had 
been captains as brave as he, even before Agamenmon. 
There had been statesmen as sagacious in the closets of the 
older absolutisms of Europe. A few patriots as incorrup- 
tible had. perhaps, adorned the better days of Roman liber- 
ty. But in him, courage, wisdom and unswerving integrity 
coexisted in wondrous harmony, and were set ofT by love of 
liberal knowledge, which n]ade him a generous patron of 
letters. It was the crowning honor of the great Saxon 
monarch of England, after having vanquished the enemies 
of his country and remodeled her jurisprudence, to have 
laid the earliest foundations of those magnificent universi- 
' ties where genius and learning have ever since held their 
court — whose cloisters echoed with the footfall of Addison, 
and from whose turrets Newton looked out upon the mid- 
night sky. In regarding these venerable establishments, 
with their crowded nuiseums, their vast libraries, enriched 
by the accumulations of ages, their cabinets and gardens, 
the mind reverts with fondness, through the long vista of a 
thousand years, to him whose forecast fostered their humble 
beginnings. With peculiar pride., then, gentlemen, upon 
each celebration of their annual ceremonies, may your lite- 
rary societies recall the name of Washington, associating it 
with the patronage of letters, and with the infancy of this 
excellent institution. What though^ as 3et, it may be con- 



sidered as not having reached the period of maturity — what 
though it boast not the prestige of ill-sustained reputation — 
what though no iruposing piles of elaborate arcliilecture, 
such as overhang (he banks of the Cam and ihe Cherwell, 
here greet and gratify the eye of the visitor? You may 
look back upon half a century of unobtrusive usefulness. 
You may count over a long list of distinguished men, here 
trained for service in the State, who recognized with 
pleasure the obligations due to Alma Mater. You may 
point now to a body of men, composing the faculty of the 
college, well fitted by long study — the viginti annoruni 
lucubrationes — for the honoiable positions they so eminently 
dignify. And you may say, in reviewing the history of the 
institution, from its inception to the present day, that it has 
done nothing unworthy of the name of Washington. 

But you may go further than this. The name which 
distinguished this academy, before it rose to the rank of a 
college, is suggestive of high patriotic resolves and "fragrant 
of Revolutionary merit." It was no idle thing that they, 
who directed the instructions of the school, should designate 
it as <' liiBEiiTY Hall." For here they sought to teach 
the great doctrines of constitutional freedom, and to imbue 
(he minds of the youth of Virginia, amid (he troublous and 
stormy period of our great struggle, with that spirit of " re- 
sistance to tyrants" so happily expressed in the proud motto 
that encircles her agis. Nor was it long before an oppor- 
tunity was presented for (he practical illustration of these 
noble sentiments. 

The historian,* who has recorded the incident, after 
alluding to the general confusion and embarrassment which 
prevailed, and mentioning that the services of eveiy man 
were required for the exigencies of the campaign, goes on to 
say "The clergy, indeed, were exempted by law; but they 



* Rev. Henry Ruffner, D. D. 



9 

did not exempt themselves. They, laying aside the badge 
of their order, assuming the habiliments, and girding on the 
armor of the soldier, marched to the tented field, or to the 
field of battle. The principal of Liberty Hall, himself a 
clergyman, is known to have volunteered his services, on a 
pressing occasion, in concert with other volunteers, who, 
being destitute of officers, appointed him their captain and 
marched to meet the enemy. The enemy had retired, and 
they were discharged. The students of the academy, too, 
were called forth in common with the other militia. On 
one occasion, not yet forgotten, leaving the hall of science, 
exchanging Homer and Hesiod for the rifle, they hastened 
with their associates to the head quarters of the Southern 
army; and, soon after arriving, were led on to battle. 
Placed in open ground, they faced the British regulars for 
hours together, contending with chivalrous bravery for the 
mastery of the field, alternately advancing or retreating, as 
the rifle or the bayonet prevailed.* But war did not endure 
forever. The ^halcyon days of peace returned. The cruel 
instruments of Mars were laid aside, and the implements of 
husbandry and the arts were resumed. The doors of 
Liberty Hall were again thrown open, and students resorted 
thither in greater numbers than at any former period." 

These are indeed glorious reminiscences for you, gentle- 
men, animating you to increased devotion to the interests 
and welfare of your collegiate foster-mother. An institu- 
tion, cradled in the Revolution and touched with the bap- 
tism of blood and fire, can never we trust be unworthy of 
the steadiest attachment of her sons, nor cease to impart the 
lessons of patriotism to the rising youtli of the country. 

But in this retrospect, in which we are indulging, let us 
not forget the honorable mention of a name, which one of 
your societies has done well to keep in remembrance as its 
distinguishing appellation; I mean the name of William 
Graham. He it is whom we must consider as the Father 

* For an interesting account of the part taken by the students of 
Liberty Hall in the Southern campaign, see Foote's "Sketches of 
Virginia." The engagement here spoken of was the battle at Guilford 
Court House. 

2 



10 



of Washington College; he was the principal of "^Liberty 
Hall," of whom we have just read, as laying aside the 
badge of the clergy and going forth, in the hour of danger, 
to meet the British steel — a man, if ever there was one, 
who labored to be useful without caring to be renowned, 
and whose actions, never dazzling when performed, yet 
'"'smell sweet and blossom in the dust." ''The world," 
says quaint old Sir Thomas Browne, "does not know its 
greatest men." The same idea has been happily expanded 
by poets and philosophers, both before and after the author 
of the Religio Medici. Who of us has not gone often with 
the elegist into the churchyard, to muse with him over the 
"village Hampdens," who sleep in obscure corners; men, 
unrecorded in historic annals and uncanonized in song? 
But a sliort time since, I stood beside the grave of William 
Graham, and I could not repress a melancholy reflection 
upon the emptiness of human applause, in thinking how 
little is now known or said, in the Commonwealth of Vir- 
ginia, of one of her most useful and faithful servants. He 
rests in the crowded burial ground of St. John's Church, 
at Richmond, in immediate contact with the building which 
the eloquence of Patrick Henry illustrated, with the fore- 
fathers of the hamlet sleeping around him. No costly ex- 
pression of sculptured grief marks the spot. A simple tablet 
of white marble tells the unpretending story of his life. 
Yet to the eye of him who estimates greatness by results, 
and who lias read understandingly the past records of the 
Commonwealth, there are few tombs that possess a higher 
interest within her borders. Such an one will feel, too, the 
abiding assurance that as the works of Graham live after 
him, his name will not be altogether forgotten, and that, in 
after times, the spirit of philosophical history, whose obser- 
vation nothing escapes, "that spirit to which the half- 
obliterated figures of a procession upon a wasting architectu- 
ral fragment reveal intelligibly and instructively, some glory 



11 

or some sorrow of a past age,"* in pondering the manifes- 
tations of the day in which he lived, will delight, in the 
person of another Old Mortality, to wipe the dust from his 
antiquated urn and to freshen the inscription which it bears. 

But to leave these local recollections, which, pleasing as 
they are^ have I fear already detained us too long, I proceed 
to lay before you the topic, which I propose, for a brief por- 
tion of time, to discuss. You will extend to me, I trust, 
the largest indulgence, if, as I proceed, you find me but 
repealing what you have heard very often before. I can 
advance no new theory, nor build up any novel and ingeni- 
ous argument. The path is beaten and will doubtless prove 
familiar, but there are some truths so essential in their 
character, and it is to be feared, so much neglected, that 
they cannot be too often dwelt upon, and it will better sub- 
serve, in my judgment, the object which has brought us 
together to talk over these, than to indulge in the most fan- 
ciful and finely-wrought of all rhetorical devices. Pre- 
mising thus much, I invite your attention to a few remarks 
on the Present Condition of Education and Litera- 
ture IN Virginia. 

Humiliating to our State pride as may be the confession, 
it must be admitted that Virginia has done little as yet in 
the cause of Popular Instruction. While the people of 
New England, by their system of universal education, have 
prospered, morally and physically, Virginia, the magna 
mater virmn, the first of the colonies to resist the encroach- 
ment of the mother country — whose sword, drawn upon the 
firing of the first volley at Lexington, was never sheathed 
more till night had fallen upon the silent and shattered re- 
doubts of Yorktown — has steadily declined in influence and 
standing, from her neglect to provide adequate means for 
diffusing knowledge among her citizens. More than two 

* Hon. Rufus Choate. 



12 



hundred years ago, in the year 1647, the pilgrim settlers of 
Massachusetts, poor and unfriended, passed an act for the 
establishment of an uniform system of common schools. 
No legislative action in the matter was ever taken by Virgin- 
ia until within forty years past. The college of William & 
Mary, it is true, was established at an early day. But no 
academies, nor common schools met with favor at the hands 
of the State, and it has not been until within a comparative- 
ly recent period, that the subject has been recognized as one 
demanding the attention of the government. And what 
has been the consequence? How stand we in the compari- 
son with our sister commonwealths? Let us look at the 
matter fairly and speak of it with candor. 

From a recent editorial of the London Times, embracing 
some judicious remarks upon an educational movement of 
Mr. VV. J. Fox, in the House of Commons, I take the fol- 
lowing passage in allusion to the state of general informa- 
tion among the people of England — which presents a paral- 
lel only too painfully obvious with the same class in the 
Old Dominion: 

^^ There can, at least," says the Times, "be no harm in 
ascertaining, in bringing to light, and in recognizing the 
facts of the case. Whatever our opinions, at all events let 
us get at the facts. There is a force in facts. They speak 
for themselves, and often settle a question about which opin- 
ions were ever divided. The first fact that we have to deal 
with is the actual state of secular education in this country. 
On this point, we will speak as if there were no such things 
as blue-books, and as if controversy had never laid its rude 
hands on the question. Wo speak not as politicians, phi- 
losophers or religionists, much less as partisans, when we 
record our sorrowful experience that the laboring classes of 
this country are more ignorant than it would be decent or 
even possible to describe. W hat they know of religion it 
is not easy to say, for they arc little in the habit of express- 
ing their thoughts, and are least of all able to do so under 
scrutiny. What may be called their professional knowledge 



13 

is highly respectable. The British laborer is the best living 
tool in the world. But here all his knowledge and intelli- 
gence end. Beyond his field or his workshop, he generally 
knows nothing. There is no amount of ignorance or of 
error, of which he is not capable. To him literature, 
science and art — the progressive history and the accumula- 
ted discoveries of several thousand years — are to him as 
they had never been. He knows nothing of the face of 
this globe — nothing of the history or constitution of his 
country — nothing of its poets, its philosophers, and its 
divines. The enthusiastic young clergyman, who enters 
on the care of an agricultural parish fresh from the studies 
and honors of the university, finds as great a gulf between 
himself and the minds of his flock, as if they were the 
newly-converted natives of New Zealand. Shakspeare, 
Milton, Pope, Gray, and even the sweet and simple 
Goldsmith, Addison and Johnson — in fact, all our other 
national names, are as utterly unknown to the mass of our 
people, as they are to the population of China. The Bible 
and the prayer-book, the hymn-book, the spelling-book and 
arithmetic, with some theological and devotional tracts, 
constitute the whole of the village literature; and it is far 
from our purpose to dispute their value, w^hen they are 
studied with sincerity and zeal. But, as we have said, of all 
other literature, all other history, all other poetry, all other 
science, the rustic knows nothing. If he is old enough to 
remember George IV., he may possibly be shrewd enough 
to conclude that there was also a George I., but beyond 
that, he knows nothing; and, in general, if he was informed 
by a gentleman that George I. was established in this king- 
dom by C^sar, or Alexander, or Abraham, he would 
swallow it without the smallest hesitation, just as he would 
any other absurdity in history or science. In truth, so far as 
regards all these things, he is an utter barbarian." 

Now, is not much of this applicable to our own laboring 
population? They are agriculturists and not artisans; but 
will not the description answer to many of them with singu- 
lar and melancholy fitness? How many are there of those 
who make up the monthly assemblages upon our court- 
greens, whose minds are in the dark, not only as to the his- 



14 



tory of the past and the general condition of the globe they 
live upon, but as to the first doctrines of moral accountability 
and the benign truths of religion? I recollect to have been 
somewhat startled, about eighteen months since, at the 
statement made by the eloquent Assistant Bishop of Virgin- 
ia, to a crowded congregation in Richmond, that within a 
day's ride of that city, there was a county in which neither 
a clergyman nor a place of worship could be found. One 
would surely think that the village literature of the court- 
house of that county was destitute alike of prayer-book and 
spelling-book. Not to weary you with statistics, it may 
convey a just notion of the benighted condition of our State 
to say, that on the 1st of October last, there were thirty 
thousand poor children, over the age of five years, in one 
hundred and seven counties and towns, without any means 
of instruction whatever. I know no more painful reading, 
in the whole range of documentary publication, to an 
educated Virginian, than the Report of the Sscond Auditor 
on the State of the Literary Fund, with the accompanying 
proceedings of the school commissioners throughout the 
commonwealth. The cold indifference of some — the neglect 
of others — ■the akernations of liope and despondency, and 
the struggling aspirations after a better system than as yet 
obtains, with those who think and feel in the matter — and 
the almost unanimous expression, in the written reports, of 
a sad sense of the gloomy and abiding present, make up a 
story of the most melancholy character. " The question 
will present itself to every man," writes the county superin- 
tendent of the county of Smyth, " Can nothing be done to 
remedy this great, this crying evil, which is increasing every 
year? And unless something is speedily done to remove it, 
and to shed light upon so many minds now in darkness, it 
will be impossible to conjecture to what it will lead. Can 
any be willing to trust their rights, their liberties and their 
lives, to such hands? Many of these persons, when grown 



15 

up, will be called upon to serve on juries^ and in other 
capacities^ to settle all the important questions that may 
arise. Is it not, then, of the utmost importance that Jhey 
should be educated?" '^Virginia," says the county super- 
intendent of the coimty of Marion^ ^'has a name to live in 
point of public education, while she is in fact dead. Her 
literary fund figures in the statute books, while her poor 
children figure in ignorance. 'Knowledge is power.' 
While other States are becoming powerful by the liberal 
support they give to public education, Vii^inia is growing 
impotent in every thing that pertains to national greatness. 
Develope the intellect of the children of the rising genera- 
tion, and they will develope all the natural resources of the 
State. In short, it is useless to try to conceal the miserable 
rickety system of public education in this commomvealth by 
Jlaming reports and abstracts of its condition. We may 
grow up with our minds familiarized to these, while our 
children may grow up as ignorant as barbarians, as far as 
the practical effect of the public education is concerned." 
But let us quote no more from the disheartening record. 
When we consider, beyond all this, that there are seventy 
thousand white adults in our State who cannot read and 
write, we need add nothing to what has already been sub- 
mitted to justify us in saying of our poor, benighted Old 
Dominion, in connection with the sombre outline of the 
London journalist, '' Mutato nomine de tefabula narratur.'''' 
Now I must and will call this a deplorable state of things. 
We cannot shut our eyes to it. We may meet on occasions 
like the present, to partake of intellectual repasts, but the 
spectral embodiment of ignorance rises before us, like the 
death's head at the banquet. We may cajole ourselves 
with the delusion that much that has been said of our 
degeneracy is but idle slander, and we may essay to walk 
on with manly stride in the procession of the nations, but 
the fiend is ever behind us, tagging at our skirts, and we 



16 

cannot bid him away. With what portentous evil does it 
not threaten us at the present important juncture of our 
State politics ! A Convention is soon to assemble to re- 
touch and modify the Constitution under which we live. 
Without presuming to inquire into the counsels by which 
the deliberations of that body shall be guided, it is not too 
much to assume that great changes will be made in the 
right of suffrage; that this inestimable privilege of a free- 
man, indeed, will be universally extended without regard to 
property qualification. Now if a change of such magnitude 
as this is to be made, should we not look well to its conse- 
quences, and see to it that those upon whom this privilege is 
to be bestowed are well qualified to use it to advantage? If 
we cast pearls to swine, we may expect that they will turn 
again and rend us. Is there not a fearful risk in commit- 
ing the destinies of our sovereign State into the hands of 
unqualified and uneducated voters? The principle, broadly 
established and demonstrated by our own confederacy, that 
^^man is capable of self-government," is true only condi- 
tionally. If the inquiry were made of some of the islands 
of the Pacific, where man exists in a semi-barbarous state, 
or of a community such as we find at Botany Bay, de- 
praved by crime, whether or not they were fit to govern 
themselves, we should not hesitate to say that they were as 
little so as the brutes that perish. Now, man in his primitive 
condition is the same everywhere, and unless his suscepti- 
bilities of moral and intellectual improvement have been 
quickened and nurtured by a proper system of training, 
would be as dangerous a governor in Virginia as beneath 
the skies of New Zealand. Recognizing this, we come, for 
the first time, to see our apathy in its true light. Horace 
Mann, the Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Educa- 
tion, who did noble service for the good of his race before 
he enlisted in the ranks of folly and fanaticism, has said, 
among other excellent thoughts on this subject, " The hu- 



17 

man imagination can picture no semblance of the destructive 
potency of the ballot-box in the hands of an ignorant and a 
corrupt people. The Roman cohorts were terrible j the 
Turkish Janizaries were incarnate fiends; but each was pow- 
erless as a child, for harm, compared with universal sufTrage, 
without mental illumination and moral principle. The 
power of casting a vote is far more formidable than that of 
casting spear or javelin." Let us ponder well these truths, 
and they may incite us to new efforts. We hear much in 
these days of Art-unions, and we have been told that the arts 
can never flourish in a Republican government. I will not 
stop to discuss the question, though I believe that the arts al- 
ways follow the advancing steps of civilization and refine- 
ment. But if this be true, if it require all our energies, in 
all time to come, to teach the people the rudiments of know- 
ledge, and progress in the arts be incompatible with universal 
education, then I say, be it so. Let us have the people en- 
lightened; let us have Education- Unions; and we may re- 
sign, without a sigh, the glorious creations of the pencil and 
the sweet idolatries of the chisel. We may give up to the 
monarchical governments of the Old World all the painting 
and all the sculpture that ever adorned the slavery of a 
people. We may give up to them all the music that ever 
lulled a nation into the repose of despotism. The storied 
pictures of the Madonna, wrought by men immortalized in 
art — the marble triumphs of Canova — the dulcet harmonies 
of Bellini — shall be theirs. I say that we might willingly 
resign all these for the blessings of universal education, for 
we are invoked by no mean considerations to activity in the 
cause. The preservation of our good name calls to us in 
its behalf. The consecrated soil of Virginia has found a 
tongue, and the graves of our fathers are not dumb; we 
may find a Dodona at Mount Vernon, if we would but 
listen to its oracles, and catch an inspiration beyond any 
Delphic revealing at Monticello; there are voices from the 
3 



18 



past and voices from the fiiturcj and with one sound, like 
the rush of many waters, they cry out to iis, as did the 
prophet of old to the chosen of God, '^ Go through, go 
through the gates; prepare ye the way of the people; cast 
up, cast up the highway; lift up a standard for the people!" 
It may be urged, it is true, in mitigation of our negli- 
gence that there have ever been in Virginia serious and pe- 
culiar obstacles to the imiversal diffusion of knowledge. 
They, whose efforts have been directed to the establishment 
of a general plan for the State, have been met in limine 
with these obstacles, which are well summed up by another 
as consisting in "the irregular densitij of population, the 
variety of social pursuits in different sections of the State, 
and the existence of that anomalous institution under which 
population taxed as property may not participate as persons 
in the advantages of the system of education established; the 
slave excluding the scholar, and the owner being required to 
pay a tax upon the very subject which deprives him often of 
the opportunity of enjoying the results of his own contribu- 
tion."* Looking at these difficulties in the way of educa- 
tional reform, it may, perhaps, be expected of me that I 
should give a practical direction to this inquiry by suggesting 
some mode of removing them. But it will be recollected 
that this was no part of my purpose in the outset. It might 
be shown, I think, that there are great defects in the present 
system. It has already been established by one who has 
thoroughly investigated this subject, the able Professor of 
Ancient Languages in this institution, that a radical defect 
exists in the want of provision for the children of the mid- 
dle class, and that many children really indigent are kept 
away from the schools now in operation from an indisposi- 
tion on the part of parents to accept aid upon terms which 
they consider degrading. It would not, in my judgment, 

* Wm. M. Burwell. Address before the Society of Alumni, Universi- 
ty of Virginia. 



19 

be difficult to show that this might be remedied by the 
gradual adoption, on the part of the Legislature, of a sys- 
tem of free schools for all classes, proceeding, however, 
with due caution, with direct reference to place and circum- 
stance, and mindful of the wise admonition of Lord 
Bacon,* that "it is good not to try experiments in States, 
except the necessity be urgent or the utility evident; and 
well to beware that it be the reformation that draweth on 
the change and not the desire of change that pretendeth the 
reformation." It might be shown, also, I think, that the 
instruction of the people is clearly one of those great pur- 
poses for which all should be taxed for the common benefit 
of all, and that the capitalist and factor should no more 
object to pay for the increased protection extended to his 
property by educating the poorer classes, than to pay a pre- 
mium for its insurance against fire or the perils of the deep. 
It might be useful, too, in this connection, to inquire into 
the practical working of district free schools in those coun- 
ties where they have already been put in operation. But 
I leave to abler men such duties as these, content with 
merely exhibiting to you the actual condition of aflfairs 
without any speculations whatever. The time is not far 
distant I trust when other friends of education, such men 
as Garnett, and Fitzhugh, and Campbell, who have passed 
away, will rise up to wipe out this bar sinister from our 
escutcheon, and restore Virginia to the proud position which 
she once occupied, as first in all the elements of greatness 
upon the roll of independent sovereignties. 

There is, however, one branch of the subject to which I 
will make a passing reference, as perhaps the most impor- 
tant in any system of education. I mean the provision of 
competent teachers for the management of the established 
schools. The want of men in all respects qualified for this 

* Essay on Innovations. 



20 

responsible duty, has been seriousl}'^ felt even in the North- 
ern States of the Union. In Virginia we need not only a 
larger supply of such men, but a more rigid discipline of 
pre-examination for those who are admitted to teach under 
the present regime. The same Professor, to whom I have 
already alluded, has shown that teachers, as public servants, 
occupy the same footing with candidates for practice in law 
or medicine, and that government is bound to protect society 
against empirics in instruction quite as much as against the 
pettifogger and the quack. With reform in this matter 
might be judiciously combined an extension of the system 
of normal schools, of which we have seen the auspicious 
results in the happy operation of the experiment recently 
commenced at the University and before tried successfully 
at the Military Institute at this place, an establishment firm- 
ly seated in the affections of the peqple of Virginia. The 
college of Emory and Henry presents another instance of 
the wise adoption of this plan of educating teachers, which 
might well be made a part of the system of instruction 
at every collegiate institution asking State aid. Let each 
college receive a moderate annuity, to be repaid by the 
gratuitous board and education of deserving young men, 
selected impartially from all parts of the State, subject 
to the sole condition that they should open and teach a 
school somewhere in Virginia for a term of years after the 
expiration of their collegiate course, and a large number of 
young men might thus be annually returned to their respec- 
tive counties, qualified to teach and to raise the standard of 
educational requirements among those who, however incom- 
petent, are now engaged in teaching. Our colleges, too, 
thus banded together in support of a common system, 
would feel the impetus of a new spirit of emulation, and 
labor in the same noble cause, unimpeded by unworthy 
jealousies, and we might soon look for the appearing of the 
auroral light of that auspicious day, whose meridian bright- 



21 

ness shall overspread the land as the gleam of a supernal 
glory. 

This consideration brings me, gentlemen, to another and 
more congenial division of my subject — education consid- 
ered as it is pursued in our colleges. And I turn to this 
grateful theme, with much the same sensation of relief, as 
that with which the eye that has been oppressed with the 
glare and desolation of a desert, rests upon the grassy slopes 
of the vernal landscape. In such a mental wilderness as 
we have been regarding to-day, the quiet retreats of a col- 
lege, though seen at wide intervals, are indeed as ^'the 
sliadow of a great rock in a weary land." Tliere is some- 
thing, too, in the local influence of such a place that brings 
up to me a thousand associations of buried years that cluster 
around a spot which was brightened with the mellowest and 
holiest sunshine of life. The collegiate career is with every 
one who has gone out into the busy world a cherished recol- 
lection — a picture framed and hung up in the gallery of 
memory on which he loves to gaze — and let the interval 
which separates him from that happy period be long or short, 
the slightest link — the meeting of a class-mate — a distant 
view of the old haunts, such as Gray caught of the antique 
towers of Eton — more especially such kindred rites as now 
engage us here, will strike out of the account the interven- 
ing pilgrimage and recall the spring-tide, even though the 
^'bliss" be but '' momentary." To review, then, in a cur- 
sory manner, so that I shall not trespass upon your patience, 
the studies of a collegiate course will be to me doubly pleas- 
urable, as in itself a grateful topic, and as reviving the im- 
pressions of a halcyon period now shut out from me by the 
barriers of Uie past. 

And here let us inquire, preparatory to our glance at col- 
legiate studies, what are the legitimate objects of University 
education? The most obvious arrangement of them is two- 
fold; first — the acquisition of knowledge in all the ramifica- 



22 

tions of letters and science as a general (raining for (lie 
liberal professions and other elevated pursuits of life, and 
the development of the intellectual faculties by their con- 
stant exercise: and;, secondly — the inculcation of pure and 
lofty principles of conduct, by which alone the student can 
secure the esteem and confidence of good men, or achieve, 
in any undertaking, great or permanent success. 

Foremost among the branches of collegiate instruction 
stand vphat are called Dead Languages, the study of which, 
like the magic syllables of the Eastern enchanter, opens to 
us untold treasures and inexhaustible wealth. No system 
of education, indeed, from which the languages are exclu- 
ded, should ever find favor with those who legislate for 
seminaries of learning. As the cultivation of a pure style 
is properly regarded as an important point in academical 
progress, it becomes a matter of moment that the student 
have access to those immortal works, whence he can best 
draw power, perspicuity and taste. He should have at 
ready command all the illustrious thoughts and deep wis- 
dom that lie enshrined in the poets and historians of by- 
gone ages. We will suppose him upon his entrance at 
college to have acquired the rudiments of the classics — to 
have read some Latin authois — and to have been T'vrt-r'w-ed 
into a respectable acquaintance with the Greek verbs. 
Here, then, should begin his studious vigils. If he would 
have music of Demosthenes to ring in his ears and the 
morals of Seneca properly impressed upon his heart — if he 
would appreciate the terrors of the tragic JDschylus and 
enjoy the beauties of Virgil — he must now apply himself 
with zeal. Hie labor, hoc opus est. Let him take courage, 
however, in considering that the acquisition of the Latin 
and Greek will be to him '^its own exceeding great reward," 
and more than repay him at last for the years of .assiduity 
that he may devote to it. 

I am aware that I now stand on debateable ground — that 



23 

classical instruction has been the peculiar field where for 
years past the most stirring educational battles have been 
fouglit, and that the contest has not yet by any means subsi- 
ded. To meet and refute the objections of cavillers, would 
be a tedious office; nor do I deem myself competent to dis- 
charge it. The most prominent and oft-repeated of them 
all, may perhaps be better met in a few words of Mr. Everett, 
than by any lengthened argumentation on the subject. 
" There may be," says he, '^a considerable portion of those 
educated at our Universities, who complain that their youth 
was passed in studies which have afterwards yielded no 
fruit. But the true ground of complaint ought generally, I 
suspect, to be rather a matter of self-reproach. It is not 
that the studies pursued at the University are of no use in 
life, but that we make no use of them. The Latin and 
Greek — to instance in these branches — are indeed often 
thrown aside as useless; but is the lawyer, the statesman, 
the preacher, the medical practitioner or the teacher, quite 
sure that there is no advantage to be derived in his peculiar 
pursuit from these neglected studies, either in the way of 
knowledge directly useful, collateral information, or grace- 
ful ornament? Is not the fault in ourselves? We have 
laid a foundation which we neglect to build upon, and we 
complain that the foundation is useless. We learn the 
elements, and neglecting to pursue them, we querulously 
repeat that the elements are little worth. We pass years at 
school and college in the study of languages, till we are just 
able to begin to use them for their chief end, the reading of 
good books written in them; and after a life passed without 
opening a Greek or Latin author, during which time what 
we knew of the languages has gradually oozed from our 
jninds, we reflect with discontent, if not with bitterness, on 
the loss of time devoted in youth to what we stigmatize as 
useless studies." 

But, gentlemen, while we thus recognize the importance 



24 

of the ancient languages, let us not shut our eyes to the fact 
that they may be made too considerable a portion of the 
collegiate course. While we would have the student be- 
come perfect master of the classics, we would not have him 
consider the structure of sapphics and hexameters, as it is 
considered in some colleges, the chief end of existence. 
He should not permit his acquaintance with the best authors 
of Greece and Rome to be obliterated by lapse of time or 
what he knew of their teachings to ooze from his mind; but 
it does not follow that the best years of his life should be 
spent in a servile and mechanical imitation of Ovid and 
Tibulliis. It does not follow that he should strive with 
patient labor to transform himself into a machine for tiie 
production of verses, when after all, the ingenious contri- 
vance of wood and iron, invented some years since, will 
arrange more unexceptionable caesuras, and in a profusion 
that will mock his most industrious efforts. The colleges of 
Virginia have done well not to borrow this feature of the 
system of the English establishments which has called forth 
the just and stinging satire of some of the most observant 
Englishmen of the age. The poet Cowper, who has left us 
many finished and pleasing specimens of Latin verse, him- 
self laments ^^this childish waste of philosophic pains," and 
tells us that the boy of his day was reared with 
No nourishment to feed his growing mind 
But conjugated verbs and nouns declined,* 

and Sidney Smith has lodged his complaint against the 
prevailing custom of "catching up every man — whether he 
is to be a clergyman or a duke — beginning with him at six 
years of age and never quitting him till he is twenty; 
making him conjugate and decline for life and deat[i; and 
so teaching him to estimate his progress in real wisdom as 
he can scan the verses of the Greek tragedians." 



* Tirocinium, or a Review of Schools. 



25 

If there were no other objection to this overweening at- 
tention to accents and quantities, it would be enough to 
condemn it that it excludes the consideration due to those 
other branches of collegiate instruction which are essential 
to make a man a scholar. There are the languages and 
literature of Western Continental Europe to be mastered 
and explored, and among them the French is now universal- 
ly regarded as a tongue without which no one's education 
can be considered complete. The time is not far off, 
indeed, in the vast and rapidly widening extension of 
human knowledge, when the linguistic labors of the student 
will not end with the European dialects. The East, at 
whose former magnificence we look through the dim twi- 
light of many centuries, and of which so little is known at 
this day, is beginning to develop, within its dusky and for. 
gotten recesses, the elements of a rich and diversified litera- 
ture, and the annals of the human family throughout ages 
never yet illumined with the torch of history. The pall of 
oblivion has been lifted from the past civilization of Egypt, 
whose sculptured rocks have been made to discourse the 
Memnon-music of a buried grandeur, and Nineveh, at 
length disinhuraed, has found an interpreter. But not to 
pursue this inviting inquiry, we come to important sciences 
which next demand the zealous study of the collegian — the 
mathematics involving all the relations of number and mag- 
nitude, and regulating the operations of the spheres, and as 
their corollary the ennobling and sublime science of astrono- 
my, which essays, not with the vulgar impostures of the old 
astrologer, but with the exactitude of infallible demonstra- 
tion, to unveil the secret springs by which the whole 
mechanism of the universe is worked; now showing us how 
the little atomite is poised in the sunbeam, and now how a 
world is held in balance. 

Chemistry, too, here asks the student's company to take 
him into the laboratory where nature herself effects her 
4 



26 

subtle transmutations and exhibits the results of her won- 
drous analysis, or bidding him survey the panorama 
stretched out beneath the canopy of heaven, with all "its 
pomp of woods and garniture of fields," proceeds to show 
how every object around him — the rock, the flower, the 
cataract, the cloud — is but a new combination of primordial 
elements. Of this science, it may indeed be said that 
"there is neither speech nor language in which its voice is 
not heard," for its simplest experiments are practised by the 
barbarian "deep in tlie unpruned forest," while the most 
remote extremities of each enlightened continent are brought 
by its magic influence into instantaneous communion, 
and we may confidentl}^ expect that, in spite of Neptune 
and his retinue, it will yet surpass the boast of Puck, and 
"put a girdle round the earth" in a second of time! Nor 
does geology fail to assert her claim to the student's atten- 
tion, with her museum of monsters now happily extinct, 
whose names are of proportionate length to their vertebrse, 
and placing a hammer in his hand, bid him get at the 
arcana of the earth by hard and well directed blows. Last 
of all, moral philosophy, with its collateral branches, bring- 
ing the student to the study of man himself, would not only 
teach him the powers of his mind and the faculty of proper- 
ly arranging his thoughts, but lead him to the contemplation 
of a loftier reason and a more glowing rhetoric in his holy 
affections and his immortality! 

Such, gentlemen, are the studies of a collegiate course; 
but let it be recollected that they are to be pursued only as a 
means to an end — for the development of the intellectual 
faculties by their constant exercise. In the study of Latin 
and Greek, it should be borne in mind that the object pro- 
posed to be achieved is not so much the acquisition of an 
immemorial. language, as the discipline of the mental pow- 
ers to an aptitude of thinking, and to the perception of the 
most delicate shade of moral excellence. So, too, in the 



27 

study of mathematics, we should apply ourselves not merely 
to angles and cubes, but to the attainment of a mode of 
thought which will make us able to apply severity of rea- 
soning to the most exalted of all human researches — the 
pursuit of actual truth. And the same rule may be applied 
with equal advantage to mental philosophy, and to the 
aspiring researches of the astronomer, that the design in 
directing the telescope and seeking out the hidden motives 
of human action, is not so much to achieve a great discove- 
ry or to show " how noble a piece of work is man," as to 
arrive at juster conceptions, through such agencies, of the 
attributes of that high IntelHgence, whose handiwork is 
shown in the firmament and whose glories are declared in 
the heavens. 

There is yet another view of collegiate education that I 
feel myself impelled to take, and here, gentlemen, you will 
pardon me, if I assume the Mentor, for I shall speak to a 
certain extent from tlie records of a sad experience. I 
would warn you, in ranging over the vast field of the ex- 
panding sciences of which we have just taken so rapid a 
glance, against the danger of not acquiring a substantial 
kno\yledge of any, in striving after a smattering acquaint- 
ance with all. Believe me, there is no humiliation so great 
as the exposure of the sciolist. Superficial education is the 
crying evil of the dayj and if the isms and ologies of our 
Northern brethren increase with the same alarming rapidity 
in time to come as heretofore, we may soon fear that there 
will be no real scholars in any one branch of scientific or 
classical investigation. The worst of it is, that your smat- 
terer is for the most part wholly unconscious of his deficien- 
cies, and is quite ready, upon all occasions, to take a promi- 
nent stand in any movement that may invite his co-opera- 
tion. Such men are public evils, and if it be true, as the 
poet has told us, that '^a little learning is a dangerous 
thing," they, like my lord Hamlet, '^ have in them some- 



28 

thing dangerous indeed," which communities and common- 
wealths may well beware of. How many of our young' 
men are there, who, with the most respectable abilities, 
become the merest pretenders from this false idea of univer- 
sal acquisition, and who, with just enough of algebra to un- 
settle their school-boy arithmetic, and just enough of Arch- 
bishop Whately to enable them to mix their figures, can 
neither make an argument nor solve a problem, but go on, 
nevertheless, rendering themselves the objects of public 
derision, until at last they awake too late to a dreadful con- 
sciousness of the distressing fact? What they know of the 
classics, it would be difficult to conjecture j but their recol- 
lections of history may be summed up in the words of the 

song, 

Old Homer wrote Virgil's Bucolics — 

The blind poet begged for his bread — 
King Charles the First cut up such frolics, 

That Bonaparte cut off his head. 
Wellington's cat had his day out, 

Milton declares 'twas a tabby, 
Garrick found Botany Bay out. 

And Hamlet built Westminster Abbey. 

Folly could not farther go than such learning as this. 
Rely upon it, it is better to know that two and two make 
four, and to be able to prove it, than to talk flippantly of 
sine and cosine. It is better to know thoroughly the sim- 
plest elements of grammar, than to discourse obscurely of 
syllogisms and enthymemes. With the unlettered many, 
the smatterer may perhaps pass for a profound scholar; but 
the really well-informed gentleman will instantly detect the 
false plumage which he displays. Among the inimitable 
essays of Elia, there is none more charming, as a revelation 
of his inmost being, than that in which he describes a ride 
with '^ one of the old school-masters," whose superior depth 
of information overwhelmed him with confusion at every 
advance. 



29 

But we will suppose the student to have completely mas- 
tered the whole cu'cle of the sciences, and to have made the 
beauties of ancient and modern literature his own. We 
will suppose him to have overcome every obstacle in his 
way, and to have written himself a man of letters, as far as 
thorough scholarship can make him so. In the view which 
we have already taken, he is still but half-educated 3 for to 
all this there must be superadded a far better and more en- 
during portion — a '-something more exquisite still" — the 
safeguard of pure and lofty principles of character. With- 
out these, he will find science a delusion and fame a snare. 
Philosophy in their absence will shed but a dubious light, 
and science, with its full effulgence, will but "dazzle to 
blind." " Wisdom," we have been told by one who 
walked in wisdom's ways, " is more of the heart than of the 
head." "The mind," says an eloquent writer,* "may be 
likened to a majestic altar, which the hand of Deity hath 
built up within us for the solemnity of his worship. The 
heart is as the votive lamp, which burns before the shrine, 
giving light, and softness, and warmth, to what, without it, 
would be a dark and cold, although a glorious thing. 
Strive, then, to light the flame." Need I add any thing to 
such language as this? Then would I say that every con- 
sideration of patriotism should impel you to do so. Remem- 
ber that it will be of little avail to diffuse "useful know- 
ledge" among the people, unless we also enlighten them 
with the precepts of a Divine morality. The records of the 
past will assure us, on every side, that something more is 
necessary than mere knowledge among the people, to make 
great and prosperous States. These same records are not 
wanting in the names of highly cultivated men, who have 
sent forth the most fatal and debasing principles that ever 
poisoned the waters of social life. Who will say that in 

* S. Teackle Wallis. 



30 

that carnival of crime, with whose horrid pageantry France 
bewildered and terrified mankind, Science did not join in 
the frantic procession, Learning- in the garb of a Baccliante, 
did not move to the vibrations of its stormy music and hft, 
up an lo Pcean amid the outcries of its mob? 

I come, now, gentlemen, at this late stage of my remarks, 
when, without protracting them to a most unreasonable 
length, I can assign myself but a few moments more, to 
say something of the other branch of the subject with which 
I started out — Literature, as it exists in Virginia. It hap- 
pens, fortunately, that a very few moments will be quite 
enough for the treatment of this topic, for in approaching it 
I can say with Canning's Knife-grinder, 

Story, God bless you, T have none to tell. Sir. 

One of our recent historians, Mr. Howison, it is true, went 
out with commendable zeal in search of this phantom, to 
dignify it with the honors of history, but labored only to 
find it at last shadowy and impalpable beyond all former 
ghostly apparitions. He began, indeed, with the beginning, 
going back to the times of the early colonists, when Mr. 
George Sandys beguiled his leisure hours with rendering 
into English the Metamorphoses of Ovid, but in the long 
lapse of two hundred years, he found only suflScient materi- 
al to occupy a small portion of a single chapter. There is 
a pleasant custom in some sections of our country, to issue, 
now and then, a volume of literary miscellanies, made up 
exclusively of articles written by natives or residents of the 
place where the book is published and called after the name 
of the place itself, as the Boston Book, the Charleston 
Book. The contributors are, in general, limited to two 
articles each. In an attempt to compile such a volume, not 
in any one of our towns, but from the whole State, how 
meagre a range of selection should we have! Should the 
extracts be of the ordinary length, what arts of the publish- 



31 

er would be called into requisition to swell it beyond the 
size of a duodecimo! Leaving out of the account all 
essays upon subjects of political or theological controversy, 
what has Virginia to show of literary excellence written 
within her bounds or by her sons? Some historical re- 
searches there are — a few essays of Ogilvie and Wirt — the 
Iliad, translated by William Munford — some amaranthine 
verse and affluent prose of the variously gifted and unfortu- 
nate Poe — a few, alas! how few, poems of the affections and 
home sketches of Cooke, the lamented and early lost — the 
sweet effusions occasionally sent forth by Jane Tayloe 
Lomax, another child of song, the story of whose days has 
been shut up in an untimely grave — these, together with the 
contributions to our periodical literature of some whose 
efforts have deserved the laurel to which they never as- 
pired — constitute the whole stock of letters that we may 
boast, Mr. Howison attributes this dearth of literary pro- 
duction among us to the fact that we have not been a read- 
ing people — from which it may be inferred, that if we had 
been more of a reading people, we should have accom- 
plished more in the field of letters. Contesting the fact 
with which he sets out, 1 arrive at a widely different conclu- 
sion, and submit that it is simply because our educated 
classes have been so much of a reading people that they 
have produced so little. With the rich stores of the English 
classics before them, they have been indifferent to the work 
of increasing the treasures of the intellect, and have suffered 
their fellow-countrymen of other States to bear off the 
honors of the pen without a contest. But another cause 
has been at work, and in it I recognize one of the greatest 
evils that has ever afflicted the commonwealth — the morbid 
desire of her sons for political distinction. This unhappy 
influence, indeed, has paralyzed every thing like useful 
enterprise in Virginia, for years past, sending off her sons to 
other States for the political preferment which all cannot 



find at home, or making tliem abject pensioners upon the 
bounty of the Federal Government. And it is not until 
this influence can be in some way allayed, and a division of 
labor effected among us, that we can look for the signs of 
returning prosperity — that we can hope to see either our 
material or our intellectual resources developed. 

It cannot be denied, I think, that there exists at this time 
a peculiar necessity for a home literature, and by this I 
mean a literature adapted to the institutions by which we 
find ourselves surrounded, and to the general frameworli of 
our society. Fanaticism in all its forms, but worst of all in 
that fell shape of modern abolition, which, with impious 
tread, has dared to confront the presence of the Divine 
Majesty itself and mock at its revelation, stalks abroad 
through the land. Its pestilent doctrines are sent among 
us through every conduit, and our utmost vigilance is neces- 
sary for self-preservation. Among all its agencies, there is 
none so active or so potent as the press; and no man can 
deny that the entire Northern press is anti-slavery in its tone 
and spirit. The political journalists may, indeed, observe a 
show of neutrality, such of them (perhaps half a dozen,) as 
are not avowedly hostile to Southern interests upon party 
issues; but the literary and religious papers, witii few excep- 
tions, are tinged with the fanatical blue, relying, as they do, 
in great part, on Southern patronage for support. Now, is 
it not humihating to the Southern character that all our 
reading should be drawn from such a source as this? There 
is but one way to counteract this influence, and this is by a 
literature of our own, informed with the conservative spirit, 
the love of order and justice, that constitutes the most 
striking characteristic of the Southern mind. In such an 
enterprise, worthy of the best efibrts that we can make, 
Virginia is impelled to take the lead, as well by every con- 
sideration of pride and self-interest, as by the thronging 
recollections of the past. 



33 

I would not be understood, gentlcmenj in these general 
remarks, as counselling any one of you to the choice of lit- 
erature as a profession in life. 1 know too well the doubt- 
ful issues of success and failure and the certainty of inade- 
quate reward in authorship, not to strenuously advise against 
such a course. Indeed, any one who should choose the 
making of books as a means of support in this da}'', with 
his eyes open to the bankruptcy of thousands before him, 
might well, in my judgment, be made the subject of a com- 
mission of lunacy. He should be taken care of. The 
greatest of modern essayists* has shown that by the increased 
facilities in the art of printing and the consequent multipli- 
cation of readers in the cheapness of books, a great change 
has been effected since the days of Boileau, in the relations 
of patron and protege, and that the public now supplies the 
place of Meceenas to the youthful author. It would be 
difficult to say whether this change, as far as the author is 
concerned, has been for the better or the worse. The dear, 
good-natured, pensive public, is quite as capricious a patron 
and demands quite as much adulation as a Halifax or an 
Augustus. The author's independence is compromised as 
much now as ever, and the pithy saying of old Dr. Fuller 
is just as true as when it was first uttered, that ^'learning has 
made most by those books on which the printers have lost," 
The consequence is, that there are few prose-writers whose 
productions have escaped the pastry-cooks, that have made 
an honorable maintenance, and still fewer 

Poets that deserve the bays 
And do not dread the duns. 

Authorship, in the cant phrase of the times, "does not pay." 

But while the cultivation of letters as a profession may 

not invite you with the hope of recompense, it holds out to 

* Macaulay. Edinburgh Review, April, 1830. Art. Rob't Mont- 
gomery's Poems. 

5 



34 

your grasp substantial honors and offers to you a wreatli of 
fadeless verdure. As a relaxation from severer toil, it will 
be to you inexpressibly delightful, and it may not be denied 
you to add to the stores of your country's literature some 
contributions which it will not willingly let die. As a pro- 
fessional man, as a planter, as a merchant, in any pursuit of 
life, you will find abundant intervals of leisure for literary 
cultivation; and as a proof of what may be accomplished 
in this way, by even the most laborious men, I need only 
refer you to Mr. Wirt, whose dalliance in the '^ primrose 
paths" of Belles-Lettres was always at odd hours, snatched 
from the toils of an irksome and most absorbing profession. 

It has been said, indeed, again and again, that the age of 
Belles-Lettres, like that of chivalry, is gone — that we may 
look no more in this prosing age of Benthamism for the 
early light — the lumen purpureum juventce. — that gilded 
the courts of Elizabeth, and Anne, and the pontificate of 
Leo — and we are now told that poetry has shed its last ray 
across the surface of Windermere in the death of the bard of 
Rydal Mount. It were vain to discuss the idle question 
whether another Milton or Shakspeare will probably arise in 
our time, or in a succeeding age, in the Hesperian longitudes 
of our Western hemisphere, for the result is not to be at- 
tained by any reasoning. Genius is like the wind — it blow- 
eth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but 
canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. It 
found Burns "walking in glory and in joy " by his plough 
along the mountain side, and it encircled his head with its 
aureola in the mists of Scotland. Its next celestial re-ap- 
pearing may be in our own mountain gorges. One thing is 
certain. The same inspirations which have produced poe- 
try in times past, will continue to produce it. The objects 
that surround us in the changes of the season, the efllores- 
cence of spring, the maturity of summer, autumn's glories of 
the forest and winter's freezing chill, the surge of the ever- 



35 

lasting sea, the cold light of stars, the '^ hopes and fears that 
kindle hope," in the heart of man himself, and more than 
all, the sweet affections of woman, will always abide, and 
these will touch the poetic chord until the end of lime. 

The power of spells 

Still lingers on the earth — but dwells 
In deeper folds of close disguise 
Than baffle Reason's searching eyes. 
Nor shall that mystic power resign 
To truth's cold sway his webs of guile, 
Till woman's eyes have ceased to shine, 
And woman's lips have ceased to smile, 
And woman's voice has ceased to be 
The soul of earthly melody. 

Poets we shall have, and, perhaps, philosophers and his- 
torians — there may be yet, if not another Milton or Shak- 
speare, an American Wordsworth, to teach the primal duties 
amid the stillness of his native hills, made immortal in his 
verse, some Scott to weave the legends of our early histo- 
ry into enduring narrative, or some Macaulay, in whose 
luminous and resplendent memory the mighty actors of 
other centuries shall live and move again, and whose glow- 
ing descriptions shall present as on a frieze a procession of 
historical figures in vivid relief, thus bringing before a dis- 
tant posterity the images of our Revolutionary Sires in 
bright succession, and showing, as Sergeant Talfourd has 
well expressed it, '^the embossed surfaces of heroic life." 

Literature has, indeed, to contend with one serious obsta- 
cle in America arising out of the exceeding cheapness of 
modern pubhcation — the alarming circulation of infamous 
books. These dangerous pests are showered upon the land 
from a thousand vile presses that work off their ten thousand 
impressions per hour, in the cellars of certain printing offices 
of our largest cities, where the light of day never shines, 
and they infest the public thoroughfares — the public convey- 
ances — even the penetralia of our houses — as a plague worse 



36 

than any visited upon Pharaoh in the hardness of his heart. 
Tlie worst of them are borrowed from the French, and the 
miscreants, who prostitute their talent to the base use of ren- 
dering them into English, have succeeded so far that there 
seems nothing of the original grossness lost in the transla- 
tion. The Arch-enemy of our race lias selected Prance as 
the point from which to assail mankind with two of the 
most destructive '^infernal-machines" ever constructed by 
the amourers of the pit — the Encyclopedia and (he feuillcion. 
The latter is likely to prove by far the more efficient and 
deadly engine. The Encyclopedists, skilled as they were 
to ''make the worse appear the better counsel" and apt in 
all the arts of sophistry, made a bold and open assault upon 
religion and morality, which was met and repelled. Their 
damnable books still exist, but the mercy of a divine Provi- 
dence, which has placed an antidote by every poisonous 
weed and armed us against the venom of the rattlesnake, 
has counteracted, througli the agency of man, the deadly 
juices of this aconite. But the feuUleton, insidious in its 
approaches, has already undermined the citadel before we 
are aware of the danger, as when Pompeii was buried be- 
neath the lava of Vesuvius, the tempest of wrath, as Bulwer 
tells us, fell upon those who were yet unconscious of im- 
pending peril. And so it was not when Satan revolved 
schemes of leading the serried hosts of the fallen angels 
against the cherubim who stood at the gate of Eden, but 
when he entered himself, in subtle guise, and with honied 
speech, that a Paradise was lost. It is on this account that 
we must watch narrowly and discriminate between true and 
false literature — between the beacon and the ignis fatuus. 
True, sound, wholesome literature — that which recognizes 
the Bible as the best and only true source of its inspiration, 
will be to you a solace in hours of depression, a companion 
in solitude, a "guide, philosopher and friend," in all the vi- 
cissitudes of life, while the false, frivolous sentiments of the 



times will only debase your understandings and corrupt your 
morals. The one is a savour of life unto life, the other of 
death unto death j the one reflects the smile of Beatrice, the 
other the grin of Mephistopheles; the one hands us the 
perspective glass through which we see afar off the gleam- 
ing gates of the celestial city, the other opens the seventh 
seal and unfolds the horrors of the Apocalyptic vision; it is 
the difference between Timotheus and Cecilia in the ode of 
Dryden, 

This raised a mortal to the skies, 

That drew an angel down. 

In the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris, there is an apart- 
ment devoted to bad books of all ages and countries, which 
bears the appropriate name of Hell. The ingenious libra- 
rian, who bestowed upon it so fitting an appellation, might 
have written above its entrance the dread inscription which 
the Italian poet affixed over the portals of his Inferno, 
"They who enter here, leave hope behind." To us the 
whole temple of the Litterature Extravagmtte is such an 
apartment; let us not darken its vestibule; let us hold no 
communings with its hierophants; let us close our ears to 
the fevered rhapsodies of Lammennais and the insane 
ravings of Proudhon, to the vile teachings of Fourier and 
the debasing sentiments of Sue. 

And now, that m}^ theme has died into an echo, I would 
mingle with its parting tones a few words of admonition in 
considering the interesting attitude that you occupy to-day. 
Some of you now stand on the coterminous boundaries of 
two distinct periods of human life. To-morrow severs your 
connection with college, and the day after, you go out to 
the cares and realities of the busy world. This considera- 
tion invites serious thoughts. Important duties await you 
in the tortuous and intricate labyrinth of this world's occu- 
pations, and there are honors, too, in reserve for those who 
will win them. But be not deceived. There is a natural 



38 

tendency with young men at college to form an impression, 
which meets with only too chilling a corrective in the expe- 
rience of after life, that society awaits their advent witli 
eager expectation, when the fact is, that society, ever en- 
grossed with its own concerns, moves on without a thought 
of them at all, until some exhibition of superior abilities es- 
tablishes their claim to public regard. Pardon me, gentle- 
men, if in advancing this opinion, I have mistaken for a 
general truth what is, to the extent of the disappointment, 
the record of my own individual case. I am aware that in 
offering the plain and somewhat desultory reflections I have 
submitted to-day, I have employed a tone of counsel whicli 
nothing but the position I occupy could warrant in this 
presence J but I would again warn you that if you would 
rise to places of usefulness and distinction, you must be 
"ever earnest, still pursuing," letting no hours shp by un- 
improved to reproach you in the future with their waste. 
Unless you resolve upon such a course as this, your early 
training will have been in vain, even the diploma, which 
shall be given you to-morrow in testimony of your studious 
application here, will be an idle mockery in coming 
years, as 

Some mournful talisman, whose touch recalls 
The ghost of time in memory's desolate halls, 
And like the vessels that, of old, enshrined 
The soil of lands the exile left behind. 
Holds all youth rescues from that native shore 
Of hope and piomise, life shall tread no more. 

The age is one of great incidents and not without alarm- 
ing portents of disaster to come. The distracted condition 
of our beloved country fills every patriotic bosom with the 
liveliest apprehension. California, a golden apple of dis- 
cord, has been thrown in among us to alienate hearts that 
should only beat in unison, and the jubilant clarions of our 
onward march to greatness are drowned in the din of frater- 



nal strife. The present crisis will have passed away, I 
trust, before you are called upon to take an active part in 
public affairs. But the price of conservative liberty is eter- 
nal vigilance, and the union will always be menaced by the 
violence of designing and abandoned men. Learn, there- 
fore, to cherish its continuance as that in which our only 
hope of safety dwells. Learn to look upon it as the Athe- 
nian looked upon his 'Parthenon. And if the day shall 
come, even though in a distant futurity, when our daugliters 
shall no longer embroider the banners of a united people, 
and this vast empire of the Western World shall be rent 
asunder by internal commotion, let no line in the melan- 
choly story of the Gibbon, who shall chronicle our fall, 
ascribe that sad catastrophe to the folly of Virginia! 



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